Aspiration has been a leading advocate for Open Translation, a nascent field of practice emerging at the crossroads of three dynamic movements of the information and internet eras: Open Content, Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS), and Open/Peer Production. Open Translation is the set of practices and work processes for translating and maintaining open content using FLOSS tools, and leveraging the internet to make that content and those tools available to the largest number of authors and readers.

There is a diverse set of Open Translation software that supports or performs language translation, but relatively little has been written about these disruptive tools to date. As part of Open Translation Tools 2009, Aspiration co-hosted the first ever Open Translation Book Sprint. The Sprint generated two separate books: a 283-page volume entitled Open Translation Tools, describing the landscape of open translation tools, and a second 124-page book entitled Video Subtitling and focused solely on that topic as a specific case of translation and localization. The sprint was organized in partnership with FLOSSManuals, and use of the FLOSSManuals.net platform made it straightforward to remix and reuse content from the main book to create the second, and then to add and manage additional content in the second book.

Utilizing the FLOSSManuals.net platform, the two books are now maintained in an open, “wiki-like” environment where anyone who wishes to can contribute additional material, and maintainers of the book can vet contributions for appropriateness and accuracy.

Open Translation Tools 2009 and the Open Translation Book Sprint were generously supported by the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation.

The Penguin Day came to San Francisco on Saturday, April 25, 2009, right before the NTC. A great crowd turned out to discuss open source for nonprofit needs, and educate participants about the rich array o

Full details are at penguinday.org. The event was generously sponsored by Google.

The final agenda can be found at

http://pd.aspirationtech.org/index.php/Penguin_Day_Agenda

Sessions included:

* Introduction to Free and Open Source Software
* Introduction to Free and Open Source Desktop Applications
* Free And Open Source Online Advocacy: Tools And Best Practices
* Online Fundraising With All Free and Open Tools
* Introduction to Linux
* Making sense of Free and Open Source Content Management Systems
* Introduction to Blogging with Wordpress
* Intro and Advanced sessions on Joomla! and Drupal
* Intro to CiviCRM 2.0 + CiviCRM 2.0 - Advanced Topics
* CiviCRM vs Salesforce.com: What Are the Differences?
* Increasing Access with Community Broadband in SF
* Learnings from Google Summers of Code
* Mobile Volunteering: The ExtraOrdinaries Project
* Healthy and Sustainable Free and Open Source Communities
* Helping Techies and Non-Techies Communicate and Cooperate
* Creative Commons And Open Content
* Free and Open Source Firewalls

Penguin Day San Francisco took place at the Odd Fellows Hall at 7th and Market Street, in the heart of downtown.

Penguin Day SF was organized by Aspiration, NOSI, PICnet, and CiviCRM.

Proprietary database systems, particularly for the desktop, such as Access and FileMaker Pro, have been ubiquitous in nonprofit organizations. But there are other options. This webinar will focus particularly on OpenOffice.org Base, a quickly developing open source alternative for desktop databases. We'll also cover open source server database systems, such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, and talk about how they can be implemented in nonprofit organizations.

Tuesday December 16, 2008, 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET

Register on the NTEN website

Plone is the open source CMS you don't hear a lot about, but is very powerful, and has a vibrant developer and user community.

Come hear Jon Stahl, one of the Nonprofit community's Plone gurus outline the requirements for Plone, tell you about setting up a Plone site, and give you the information you need in order to make your new Plone site a success.

Tuesday November 25th, 11:00 am PT/2:00 PM ET

Register on the NTEN site

The next webinar in the NTEN/NOSI webinar series is on Drupal. Drupal is quickly becoming one of the most popular CMS systems. This webinar will take you through the features of Drupal and what you'll need in order to make your new Drupal site a success.

The webinar will be co-presented by Michelle Murrain, of NOSI, and Jack Aponte, of Palante Technology.

Tuesday October 28, 2008 at 11:00AM PT/2:00PM ET

Register on the NTEN site